Fun with Graphs...

A few comparative international statistics, attractively presented: Google's Gapminder World 2006, beta.

Comments

[Emma Anne]

I am curious as to whether women who are really wealthy have more children. The graph only goes up to $60,000 a year, so you can't tell. I have two children, but I have had the thought that if I had people to cook and clean and take the kids when I'm tired, I might have liked more. And you wouldn't have to worry about college funds and camp fees, either.

[Oskar Shapley]

Brad, that tool is neat. by coincidence, I was just looking at these:

http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/images/WorldHealth2001.pdf

ANIMATED! :
http://www.whc.ki.se/index.php

( via Gallery of Data Visualization - The Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics
http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/excellence.html )

[Colin Danby]

What's even more interesting is to drag that pointer at the bottom back and forth between 1975 and 2004. in some ways the world changes pretty quickly.

[jerry]

So that is really cool and looks terribly powerful.

I wonder how you use it....

Also how one creates a url that lets one create and save and send a particular dataset and animation around.

[derek]

Choose "children per woman", select France and the USA, turn on "trails", run the movie, and see the difference between vigorous America and dying Europe.

[Bill Conerly]

Brad, you forgot to tell us: which is the cause and which is the effect?

[Maynard Handley]

Not to shill for my blog, but this post
http://name99.org/blog99/?p=24
explains what gapminder as an organization is all about and points to this talk given at google
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7996617766640098677
where the guy who runs it explains (*very coherently and well*) what they are doing and how to interpret the results.

[Maynard Handley]

"
Choose "children per woman", select France and the USA, turn on "trails", run the movie, and see the difference between vigorous America and dying Europe.
"

Someone needs to watch South Park episode 3.11
http://www.tv.com/south-park/chinpokomon/episode/2458/recap.html
and think a little about its running joke of the "big American penis".

Derek, you do understand that the year is 2006, not 1006, and that intelligent human beings don't measure each other's worth by their "virility"? Or perhaps you'd like to tell us all about how it is actually virile Saudi Arabia (4+ kids per woman) or that great success of the modern world, Niger (almost 8 kids per woman), that are poised to rule the 21st century?

[sm]

What a great toy. Thanks, Brad, for linking to it.

[CapitalistImperialistPig]

Re: Derek et al.

Note that essentially every poor or mid-level country that achieves a fertility of two experiences a rapid gain in per capita income. Fertility is falling almost everywhere, with sub-Saharan Africa the slowest to fall (and most desperately poor).

It also looks to me like the graphs conclusively show that drop in fertility tends to precede economic growth.

[Arun Khanna]

This is a neat way to look at the data.

[ogmb]

The mystery of the virile American might be resolved by this graph from Oskar Shapley's post:

http://www.whc.ki.se/index.php

where the US is the big green bubble that trails the cluster of blue Western European bubbles in child survival.

[CapitalistImperialistPig]

Note that in 1975, China was poorer (per capita) than almost all of sub-Saharan Africa, but it had a much lower fertility. Since then it has grown explosively, while Africa languished. The few exceptions where poor economic development combine with low fertility all seem to be in areas of great political stress.

[jerry]

Thanks for the link to the explanations Maynard. At this time of night, I think I will use gapminder-lite, at http://zombo.com. Similar bubbles, but easier to understand, and hey, anything is possible at zombo com, and they are very welcoming.

[Barry]

Thank you very much, Brad. This was incredible.

[marc]

I would be interested in median income per capita or some other measurement that talked about a person in the middle. my impression is that under Bush the economy has grown but only the top get any of it.

[derrida derider]

The Karolinska Institet has had publicly available betas of this product for some years now - it used to be funded by the WHO, not sure where the money comes from these days now.

Whether they begged, bought or stole it, though, its top stuff.